The present invention relates generally to hybridoma cell lines and, more specifically, to a hybridoma cell line producing monoclonal antibodies to an antigen common to all strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
Today, one of the most important pathogens causing infections in hospitalized patients is Pseudomonas aeruginosa. While two decades ago most sepsis contacted in the hospital was attributable to the more acute pathogens such as Staphylococcus and Streptococcus, recently the incidence of the more persistent infection due to gram-negative bacteria, such as P. aeruginosa, has increased. This bacterium now accounts for some 200,000 hospital-acquired infections yearly in the United States, about one-third of which are fatal. Symptoms characteristic of bacterial infections of P. aeruginosa origin include fever, chills pulmonary complications and septic shock.
Pseudomonas infections are particularly common among patients receiving anti-cancer chemotherapy, cytotix corticosteroids, and immunosuppressive treatment. Infections in such compromised hosts characteristically exhibit resistance to many antibiotics, or develop resistance over the long course of the infection, making conventional treatment difficult. The increasing use of cytotoxic and immunosuppressive therapy combined with selection for drug resistance evoked by the extensive use of antibiotics have contributed to P. aeruginosa becoming a pathogen of major clinical significance. Other pseudomonads, such as P. maltophilia, are only infrequently associated with serious human infection.
Until recently, determining the pathogen responsible for a bacterial infection, and more particularly, distinguishing P. aeruginosa from other gram-negative bacteria, has been difficult and sometimes inconclusive as positive identification could be determined only by culturing the organism in nutrient media in order to expose the characteristic morphology and biochemistry of the colonies. Within the species, however, there are a number of separate strains whose identity can be only laboriously determined. Several taxonomic systems are currently in use for describing these strains or serotypes, including the "International Typing System" which recognizes 17 strains and the more popular Fisher system which recognizes seven serotypes.
All gram-negative bacteria have a lipopolysaccharide moiety (LPS) in the cell wall termed an endotoxin, which is thought to account in major part for the deleterious effects of infections from these microorganisms. The endotoxin is composed of at least three major components: lipid A, core oligosaccharide, and O-specific polysaccharide (the last also termed the O-specific side chains). Each of the strains recognized by the International Typing System exhibits marked chemical differences in the O-specific side chains. Recently, mutant strains of P. aeruginosa, such as